The End
by JuliaBlu
Summary: It is the year 1985, and Winston and Julia have gone their separate ways. In a chance meeting, they question their own feelings... for how can they know WHAT they think in a world that conditions them to believe all lies? Careful: doublethink takes hold!
1. The History Book

The dust went flying. Winston covered his mouth, his eyes; they were stinging with heavy dust, rich silt.  
  
He coughed again, went under into a rumbling, damp refuge. He would gladly go anywhere, so long as it was far away from that god-awful noise- the noise of bombs, he proposed. Oceania was at war with Eastasia, as always.  
  
He bumbled forward, intrigued. There were no telescreens down here, in this wet, dark cavern. What he had stumbled upon was mystery. All he hoped for was, perhaps, some hidden gin. The Party wouldn't fool with him any longer, no matter what they found him doing.  
  
He plopped forward on his knees, panting. His varicose ulcer began to itch. His hand traveled down and felt something smooth. He picked it up and tossed it in his hands. It was heavy and bulky.  
  
It was a book.  
  
He looked up and saw a watery, white-blue light. He brought the book up to it. The cover read "World History."  
  
He scoffed at it. Not another lie fathomed by the Ministry of Truth! (Also known as the Ministry of Lies without the brainwashing effects of doublethink.)  
  
However, he was curious so he flipped open the cover and began to read. There were geography maps in the beginning and pictures unlike any he had ever seen. Children with dark skin and colorful clothes, and statues, and buildings and a large, golden statue of what he did not know to be The Sphinx.  
  
He continued reading, and skimming passages. Early cavemen. Neanderthals. The iceman. Then, fierce Spartans, ancient Greece, mathematicians, Aristotle, Euclid and the creation of geometry, the world is round...  
  
His head swam. Buddha, Shiva, Jesus Christ, Legalism, witch burnings, colonies, Plymouth Rock, the Declaration of Independence, July Fourth, the ultimate truth...  
  
What was this... abomination to the Party? How did it survive? He cringed; he fell on the floor, with the book sprawled across his heart.  
  
Rats in a cage, rats in a cage, rats in a cage, rats on my face, rats eating my face, rats, chocolate, chocolate, my mother, sick, sick, o God, o God.there is no God, Winston. I am your God. And I love you.  
  
He imagined Julia's face smiling out of the darkness. I love you.  
  
"No," he whispered. "She never said that. She never said that. She never said 'I love you,' did she?"  
  
An orange dot glowed two yards away from him. Smoke streamed. The light illuminated a girl in a manila, button-up top and mini skirt, with high black boots, sucking a cigarette to her lips.  
  
It was Julia. She looked at him through the smoke, a look of raw beauty, of hardened ruthlessness.  
  
"Hello, Winston," she said, almost hauntingly. Was there affection in her tone? In her very being for him? Or had the Ministry of Love drained it all from her? He would like to wish there was, but it was hard to say, seeing her there, with that icy glint in her eyes.  
  
"What was your worst fear?" he asked desperately.  
  
"I don't remember," she said, poker-faced.  
  
He was frantic. "Yes you do," he urged, coming out of the cloud of gin. He never again would taste it on his lips. Her eyes were distant. Why was she here anyway? "Yes you do," he repeated, strained. "It was to lose me, wasn't it? To give up what we had! To die loving them. Why can't I see you? Why can't you show me who you are?"  
  
"You can't win, Winston," she said heavily. "Don't you know that? Haven't you learned that?"  
  
"It's all a lie," he cried, raising the history text above his head. "This is our foundation, our truth! We lose this and we lose everything! But we haven't! It's still here!" He came at her, and thrust the book into her hands. "Real history. The past. The future."  
  
"You don't have a future," she choked out, tears streaming down her face. "We can't win, Winston. We can't win! You hear me! This place, this book, the glass paperweight! It means nothing here."  
  
"Yes, it does," he said, clasping her hand. "If we just die hating them, Julia, we can leave this world and go onto a better place. We can be peaceful." He shook his head, and tried to look beyond her stoic gaze. "God, don't you remember the way you used to be? You were so confident you would win. Confidence, in this world..."  
  
"I wasn't confident, you fool," she sobbed. "I was... I was a pretentious, arrogant brat..." She snapped away from him. "Why did you think I loved you? Who knows if I did or not? Who cares what's going on in the world? Who can do a damned thing about it? Certainly not you!" She hastily wiped away her tears.  
  
"What happened to you?" he asked. "What have they done to you... what have they-"  
  
With a fluid motion, she brandished a revolver from her coat and held it up to his forehead. He stood there, unflinchingly. "It's not loaded," he said, almost laughing. She collapsed onto the floor, and dropped the gun with a clatter. His laughter intensified, until it was ringing throughout the underground cave. He was lost in a sea of laughter.  
  
She stared blankly up at him. He kept laughing. Her lips quivered and she too laughed, but purely from nerves.  
  
"It's not loaded. It's not loaded. It's not-"  
  
BOOM.  
  
A shocking, cold bullet tore through the back of his neck. Julia screamed and her face turned a pale, revolting yellow.  
  
O'brien stood smirking in front of the fallen soldier. "I told you, Winston," he said, holding Julia's gun up to his face. "I told you. 'One day..." he sighed, "one day they will shoot you in the back of the neck.'" 


	2. Feelings

"What have you done!" Julia screamed, her hands twittering birds, flapping toward her face.  
  
"Why would you care?" O'brien spat. Before she knew what had hit her, Julia felt his hand creep around her waist- she was captive in his strong, bear- like arms. "You've worked for me- you've always worked for me, you bloody little whore."  
  
"No, not like that! Don't you ever call me that," she protested, squirming out of his grasp. Twitching, eyes still darting to Winston's immobile form on the ground, she searched her pockets for a cigarette. O'brien lit it for her, and touched the corners of her mouth.  
  
"Oh, you think you've got class, do you?" she asked sarcastically, backing away from him.  
  
"I know you Julia. You really do love him?" His eyes narrowed, passing right over her question.  
  
Julia's eyes were flaming with utter hatred. She promptly turned away from him, withdrawing the cigarette and said tremulously, "That's past tense, dearie. Did love!" He heard her sniffling. His lips curled into an ugly grin.  
  
"No, no. I'm right. He's not dead."  
  
Julia's eyes looked like two glossy crystal balls. She hit him on the shoulder with her palm, shaking harder than ever. "Don't play games with me!"  
  
"I'm not. I wouldn't let him die, Julia. Not while he hates us. He's tough, despite his blubbery layer of skin. He needs a bit more pain in the Ministry of Love."  
  
"But that bullet---?" she faltered. "It went through his neck... how?"  
  
"You only THOUGHT you saw a bullet devastate his brain. It was a simple tranquilizer, and he'll be up in a few hours. Take my word for it; the whole of Oceania does." His teeth were yellow. "And, if you're not careful, my dear Julia, you might need some cleansing too—"  
  
"I'm perfectly fine, thank you."  
  
"Good..." O'brien pulled a compact telescreen from his pocket, pressed a button, and said in a low rumble, "Police, we need..."  
  
But Julia couldn't listen to the babble. "Winston," she thought.  
  
O'brien finished his order. "And remember, Julia... you must always love Big Brother. He is always watching you, and if you don't love him, he will gently remind you of why you should love him..." She thought of Room 101 and the fear thrust upon her...  
  
She bit her lip. "I will always love Big Brother," she said listlessly, and O'brien smiled, but it was rugged, and there was a secret behind it.  
  
"Doublethink..." he thought musingly. "Yes, yes..." 


	3. Broken

This is just an anecdote... very short. Love, JuliaBlu84

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Julia was peering out of a dirty pane of crudely cut glass—a window, to be polite. The sky was a drained, sickly white and she could hear O'brien's words fill her head.

_You've always worked for me, you bloody little whore._

She forced herself not to cry as she turned from the picture outside and down to the lavatory. "In more ways than one," she replied to the thought, peering at her reflection. "I won't cry, dammit, I won't." She fiddled with a drawer beneath the sink and found the mascara.

The memories persisted:

"_Julia, you will bring me that git Winston Smith."_

"_What's in it for me?"_

_O'brien leaned forward, his serious face engraving fear into her heart. He spoke in an overpowering, yet controlled voice, "You are the only one who can do this. You can make him have hope; you can make him believe he has outlived the lies."_

"_Why? He never hurt anyone."_

O'brien's hand struck her like a snake. Tighter and tighter he pressed his hand around her throat, until her brown eyes watered. "He is a thought criminal. You must make him believe there is hope: crush him or I will crush you."

She kept peering at her reflection. "I did what O'brien wanted. I crushed him. I crushed him to save my own neck... Everything's been done now. We're nothing. We don't exist. No one cares for us. I am nothing but broken." She slammed her fist against the mirror. "But if that's true... if we don't matter... then why do you keep coming back into my mind, Winston? Why?"

Her tears were black.

.........................................................................................................


End file.
